Paige Wiser

Raising Hope already has a little place in my heart. There's something about the downwardly mobile family unit (see: "Malcolm in the Middle," "The Middle," "Raising Arizona") that's just funnier and sweeter than anything else on TV.

Mark A. Perigard

Diane Werts

Garcia's single-camera editing amplifies the comedy inherent, rather than being a crutch to create it. And the casting here is as good as "Earl," which is saying something--even if Leachman goes a bit off the rails as wacked-out "mamaw."

Michael Abernethy

As it walks a line between between mockery and compassion, Raising Hope most obviously evokes a comparison with creator Gregory Thomas Garcia's last series, My Name is Earl. In the new show, however, the players are more believable and less caricatured.

Matt Roush

I'm already sold. Plimpton is sensational as Jimmy's tough-as-nails mom, who'd just as soon drop the baby at the fire station, but we soon learn she has a way with a lullaby. Leachman is a riot, Garret Dillahunt scores as Jimmy's proudly immature dad, and special props go to the stunt babies.

Robert Bianco

Tim Goodman

Raising Hope works on two levels, the absurdist gags about dysfunctional families and lower-class values that populated "Earl," and the never-too-saccharine sweetness that Jimmy brings to the world. If Garcia can keep up this mix, Fox may have itself a non-animated comedy hit.

Heather Havrilesky

Martha Plimpton and Garret Dillahunt as the dumb dad's parents really make this one impossible to ignore completely. And even though we've already got "Oh no the ugly chick likes me" jokes and "You're right, the baby's limbs could get amputated this way" jokes and other material that might make you smile but never laugh, there's also a slightly disturbed tone here that's hard to match on sitcoms about yuppies having bad hair days.

Dorothy Rabinowitz

The show's astringent tone, its excursions into low comedy--scenes like the one where everybody trying to diaper the baby ends up throwing up on her, and similarly stomach-churning fun--all work to counter the sentimentality of themes like this one. They work only in part here, and in this case that's all to the good. The show is meant to be a comedy, and it is--a smart and witty one--but there's no missing, either, under all that grotesquerie, its hard-core sweetness.

Jonathan Storm

You can probably tell this is not your average sitcom. What you probably can't sense is a surprising tenderness and gentle humor (along with the crass) in this family, living on the socio-economic fringes in the house of Jimmy's grandma, so dotty she rarely wears enough clothes.

James Poniewozik

There are at least the slivers of promise that the show could get better. Neff is amiably charming, Dillahunt and Plimpton give their characters a realism that belies the pilot's often-contemptuous jokes, and maybe 20% of the first episode shows a sweet-heartedness that rises above the easy white-trash humor.

David Hinckley

Maureen Ryan

The tacked-on attempt to give the show some heart ("See, they're just crazy, mixed-up regular folks with good intentions!") was so disappointingly cynical and contrived. It was a transparent attempt to give depth to something that had so vociferously lacked it.